Steve Anderson > Quotes

“What makes a good coach? Someone who’s gone further than you, seen more than you’ve seen, failed in more interesting ways than you have, and prevailed in the face of challenges more daunting than you’ve faced.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Bezos was extremely savvy when it came to growing Amazon: he knew there was an exquisite tension between risk and growth.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The bottom line: There will always be tension between data and gut instincts… but you always have to have both.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“takes risks with intentionality,”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Jeff Bezos figured out very early on that unless you take risks, invest in risks, and intentionally create opportunities for “failure,” you’re not growing or thinking big enough.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“It’s easy to think successful businesses have secrets that are protected from the rest of us.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Thus, Edison may more accurately be described as the father of commercial research and as the world’s most prolific inventor. He also commented more directly on the industrialization of the trial-and-error process, saying, “The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into twenty-four hours.” Roughly two hundred years later, Jeff Bezos has taken the same type of commercial approach to invention and innovation.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“In the 2002 Letter, Bezos started using the term “shareowners” instead of “shareholders” when referring to Amazon’s investors. In essence, investors really do “own” a part of Amazon, and they should feel like owners and not tenants who have no interest in the company and only want financial gain.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“If your customer experience is inconsistent, you will never be able to scale. If your customer experience is frequently poor, you will never be able to scale. You will only be able to scale when your customer experience is consistently good.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The First Bezos Letter to Shareholders Jeff Bezos wrote his first letter to shareholders in 1997. (Each shareholder letter typically comes out in April of the following year. For commentary and analyses of future Shareholder Letters—2019 and beyond—go to TheBezosLetters.com.)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.” —Bezos (2015 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Steps to Create a Six-Page Narrative 1.Write the Press Release (This is the press release you would release in the future when the project is launched that tells the world about the project and why it’s important.) 2.Write the FAQs (Answer the common questions people will ask, in advance.) 3.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Generate High-Velocity Decisions Q: Do you have a mechanism for distinguishing between Type 1 and Type 2 decisions—and does everyone on your team understand the difference? Q: Do you have a system in place for making Type 1 decisions well? (What’s your version of the six-page memo?) Q: Do you have a mechanism in place for making Type 2 decisions fast?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Focus on High Standards Q: What are the three or four important characteristics of your highest-performing, highly-successful employees? Q: Do you (and your hiring managers) focus on those characteristics when hiring? Q: Who is responsible for “quality control” at your company—and how are they doing?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Virtual Contact Center allows employees to provide customer service support for certain products from home. As Bezos puts it, “This flexibility is ideal for many employees who, perhaps because they have young children or for another reason, either cannot or prefer not to work outside the home.” —Bezos (2013 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“From what he’s written in the Shareholder Letters and elsewhere, Bezos believes in the concept of “successful failure.” The learning process is so important he intentionally builds failure into his business model.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“It’s not easy to work here (when I interview people I tell them, “You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three”), but we are working to build something important, something that matters (11 Maintain Your Culture) to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren’t meant to be easy.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“But door desks can also be a symbol of innovation and a reminder to not just be frugal, but creative.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 13: Measure What Matters, Question What’s Measured, and Trust Your Gut”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“And four of the principles helped Amazon scale: •Maintain Your Culture •Focus on High Standards •Measure What Matters, Question What’s Measured, and Trust Your Gut •Believe It’s Always Day 1”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“The Growth Cycles and 14 Principles Again, as I was studying the Shareholder Letters, I realized they split into repeatable Growth Cycles that Bezos applies to pretty much every endeavor: test, build, accelerate, and scale with the principles falling into each area. Three of the principles helped Amazon grow through strategic testing: •Encourage “Successful Failure” •Bet on Big Ideas •Practice Dynamic Invention and Innovation”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 4: Obsess Over Customers”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Our ultimate financial measure, and the one we most want to drive over the long-term, is free cash flow per share.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Principle 11: Maintain Your Culture”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“as I was studying the Shareholder Letters, I realized they split into repeatable Growth Cycles that Bezos applies to pretty much every endeavor: test, build, accelerate, and scale with the principles falling into each area.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Four of the principles helped Amazon accelerate its growth: •Generate High-Velocity Decisions •Make Complexity Simple •Accelerate Time with Technology •Promote Ownership”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.” —Bezos (2016 Letter)”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“And, finally, it requires you to always—above all things—make decisions as if it is your first day in business, with passion and focus on customers. Be lean, be focused, and remember what mattered on Day 1 still matters. Scaling makes Amazon able to come full circle—to leverage its successes and begin again the process of testing another offering.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon

“Earn Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders don’t believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best. Dive Deep: Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. Deliver Results: Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.”
― Steve Anderson, The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon